Arte Distribution

Takeshi Kitano is an international icon. We know the actor, the multi-award-winning filmmaker, but many ignore his double personality: the crazy TV star, the street kid from Tokyo close to the Yakuza, and the political satirist who blasted taboos!

Can we dream of a better guide to introduce us to the cultural history of Japan?

While most of the stars of his generation have fallen into oblivion, his face and name remain familiar to a younger 21st century audience, fond of Giallo and slashers. But Anthony Perkins has long struggled in the shadow of his most famous character, Norman Bates – the serial killer in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, “Psycho”.

Officially presented as the most exciting new star since James Dean on the poster of “Friendly Persuasion”, Anthony Perkins has attracted the attention of such prestigious filmmakers as George Cukor, William Wyler, Stanley Kramer, Anthony Mann, Robert Mulligan, Jules Dassin, René Clément, Claude Chabrol, John Huston, Ken Russell, Sidney Lumet and Orson Welles. And the list of his co-stars does not pale in comparison, with names such as Gary Cooper, Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Sophia Loren, Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda, Marlene Jobert, Paul Newman and Roger Moore. His filmography ended up being rather impressive for an actor who was so abusively reduced to his only role for Alfred Hitchcock. We also discover that he was an amazing crooner.
His greatest success, “Moonlight Swim”, will be taken up by Elvis Presley. He even directed “Psycho III” – proof of his reconciliation with his favorite bogeyman.

A small Sicilian immigrant became in the 1930s a director with dazzling success. He believes in the American dream. No matter what America is in fact inward looking, Capra does not hesitate to twist reality in order to become one with what the country dreams of itself.

A strange echo today...

Who knows Alice Guy? This Frenchwoman was born in 1873 and she is nothing less than the first female director! The one who thought, imagined and felt that cinema would become an art and the best way to tell stories.

With nearly a thousand films, the most abundant career of her time which she was the only one to carry out on both sides of the Atlantic, this pioneer was literally wiped out by film historians during her lifetime. This film paints a fascinating portrait of an ardent and visionary woman, who has never stopped conquering new territories, only to end up with one last dream: to regain her destiny. It finally gives her the floor to deliver her version of history and regain her place in history.
 
"Alice Guy was an exceptional director, with a rare sensitivity, a remarkably poetic eye and a great instinct [...]. She has written, directed and produced over a thousand films. And yet, she was forgotten by the industry she helped create.” Martin Scorsese

From her precocious status as a sex symbol to her consecration as a filmmaker, Jodie Foster's story is about a feminist struggle, albeit atypical, fought on and off the screen. This film sets out to retrace her remarkable journey within the Hollywood industry. 

A cerebral, French-speaking woman among Hollywood bimbos: the Jodie Foster enigma is a tough one to solve. Her early years tell a story that is diametrically opposed to her current image – she used to be a girl over influenced by images and the film industry.
In her most beloved movies, whether Silence of the Lambs or Panic Room, she is the embodiment of uniqueness: a cold beauty, an icon defying all the codes of Hollywood glamor. Beautiful but never passive, heroic but not masculine, sexual but not eroticized: she cultivates her subtle, paradoxical androgyny from film to film.

After a career spanning 40 years, Tom Cruise does not seem to have developed one wrinkle. His legendary smile has dominated many blockbuster productions. This film will try to unveil the man behind the film icon.

Although he was, for a long time, Hollywood's highest paid star, Tom Cruise is also a secret and tormented actor whose break-ups and Scientology beliefs provide regular fodder for the tabloids. 

Georges Méliès has been hailed as the inventor of special effects. He shot more than 500 amazing films between 1896 and 1913. By 1923 he was bankrupt. He burned them, his enrapturing works going up in smoke... Thanks to international archives and the negatives, discover his movies in their original beauty.

First we delightfully uncover the personality of Georges Méliès, to learn how he came to this spectacular sacrifice. Then we begin a frantic search for his films in cellars and attics, until the recent discovery of an incredible treasure... A feat thought impossible!
In a gesture of despair, the director of A Trip to the Moon and The Conquest of the Pole burned the 520 original negatives of all his films, one by one, and all the copies of his films that had built his fame. In 1929, there were only 8 films by Georges Méliès still in circulation, three of which were incomplete – the last remnants of a work he had wanted to be ephemeral.
Méliès the magician had unknowingly played one last trick on us in his own way. And as lost and forgotten as they may have seemed, these negatives – which had actually gone up in smoke – reappeared across the world.
Hats off, sir Méliès.

For the first time, one of Hollywood’s greatest stars tells his own story, in his own words. From a childhood of poverty to global fame, Cary Grant, the ultimate self-made star, explores his own screen image and what it took to create it.

Cary Grant is one of the most enduring icons of the Hollywood golden era. Described by the film historian and biographer David Thomson as the greatest screen actor of all time, Grant is without doubt the actor whose style as the suave and elegant man-in-the-suit has remained iconic and modern: his image is still used in advertising and inspired Don Draper in Mad Men.
 
The 85' version, screened during Cannes Film Festival, & produced for Showtime Networks, the BBC and Arte, is available to watch here:
https://vimeo.com/279835531
Please contact your sales agent to get the password to access the video.

2018: Selected at the ARTFIFA - Festival international du Film sur l'Art. 2017: offical selection at the International Film Festival of Edinburgh (Scotland); Cannes Classic Selection at the International Film Festival of Cannes (France).

This fascinating portrait is for anyone who wants to know more about the man behind the mask. By the end of the film, you will view this famous French icon in a totally different light.  Delon speaks in a series of surprising interviews, spanning nearly 50 years.

A portrait of Alain Delon that sets out to remove the masks of this defence-ridden, international icon - for the very first time.The portrait focuses entirely on its main subject - it is “pure Delon”, with no other interviewees. Via numerous film excerpts, it follows the actor’s path right from the start. At the end of this breathtaking journey, a new vision emerges: Alain Delon, the man of 87 movies and the most handsome face in French cinema, remains a mystery. 

The word "Borsalino" today designates a felt hat. The Borsalino family brand has become a household name, like that of Tupperware, Kleenex or Walkman.

The quality felt hat, born in a small family factory in Alessandria in the 1850s, rose in status from manufactured object to veritable international myth when the craftsmanship of a small provincial town met the Hollywood dream. This film recounts the history of the manufacture of this myth, which has close ties to the history of cinema in the early 20th century.
 
Also available: feature-length version (79').

Everyone knows the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, now discover the universe of Tolkien and the legends that inspired them, with John Howe, the famous illustrator of Tolkien’s novels.

From the enchanted forest of Brocéliande to the sets of the New Zealand studios, Looking for the Hobbit plunges us into a universe we could never imagine existed. A quest to the very roots of our imagination.

The director sets off in search of the film « Nuremberg : it’s lesson for today », the official 80’ film of the Nuremberg trial by the Schulberg brothers, that was withdrawn from circulation in post-war United States for geo political reasons, and then disappeared.

This is the story of the film itself, that contained excruciating evidence of the Nazi crimes, how and why it was censored, how it was found again and the lessons it teaches us on how we treat collective memory.
There have been a number of films about Nuremberg, but this documentary takes a novel approach, exploring the trial process from a personal angle, via the fascinating story of Budd and Stuart Schulberg, the two brothers the OSS assigned to gather film evidence of the Nazis' crimes.